Daimler Financial Services makes strategic investment in New Zealand-based company Soul Machines to further develop artificial and emotional intelligence for multi-channel, customer-service pilot. Soul Machines is a world leader in the field of emotional intelligence for use in machines and digital avatars.

Daimler is the first premium brand in the automotive sector to develop emotional intelligence use cases based on Soul Machine’s technology.

After successfully testing how artificial intelligence helps our employees better service customers, we are now investing in a disruptive technology to further enhance the customer experience

Udo Neumann Global CIO of Daimler Financial Services

Customer Experience: Use Case for Call Centers

Daimler Financial Services and Soul Machines already presented digital avatar "Sarah" in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Since then, "Sarah" was successful in answering most frequently asked customer questions during an internal pilot at one of the company’s call centers in the USA. Daimler Financial Services plans to use Soul Machines' technology to optimize the customer experience through artificial and emotional intelligence. Digital avatar "Sarah" will be able to support customers like a personal concierge. Thanks to emotional intelligence, the machine will be able to recognize the most diverse individual customer needs and offer the right information at the right time. For customers, this means communicating with a convenient, voice-controlled and emotionally intelligent touchpoint. This brings Daimler Financial Services at the forefront of a changing environment, as the share of online business is increasing significantly and customers are making their purchasing decisions on digital platforms.

Customers expect intuitive, time-saving services that are available 24/7 through the channel that is most convenient for them. With the investment in Soul Machines we are laying an important foundation to not just meet, but exceed these customer expectations.

Soul Machines is a New Zealand company, founded in 2016, specializing in the space of digital avatars and emotional intelligence. The company brings technology to life by creating incredibly life-like, emotionally responsive, artificial humans with personality and character that allows machines to talk to humans face-to-face.

“As we continue to lead the world in advanced AI technology and development of digital humans across a broad spectrum of industries, this strategic investment from Daimler Financial Services puts us in an even better position to quickly develop and test our disruptive technology in the automotive sector together with our great partner,” stated Greg Cross, Chief Business Officer, Soul Machines.

Emotional intelligence will play a crucial role in adapting services, such as car financing, leasing and insurance, car-sharing or ride-hailing to customers. Different from today’s voice-based, assistance technology, “Sarah” will be programmed to recognize non-verbal behavior in real-time using face recognition.

Udo Neumann Global CIO of Daimler Financial Services

About Soul Machines

Soul Machines is a ground-breaking, high-tech company of AI researchers, neuroscientists, psychologists, artists and innovative thinkers; re-imagining how we connect with machines. The company brings technology to life by creating incredibly life-like, emotionally responsive, artificial humans with personality and character that allow machines to talk to us face-to-face. Their vision is to humanize artificial intelligence to better humanity. Soul Machines is now deploying the world’s first digital avatars with some of the biggest corporate brands in the world in Banking and Finance, Software and Technology, Automotive, Healthcare, Energy and Education industries.

* The figures are provided in accordance with the German regulation 'PKW-EnVKV' and apply to the German market only. Further information on official fuel consumption figures and the official specific CO₂ emissions of new passenger cars can be found in the EU guide 'Information on the fuel consumption, CO₂ emissions and energy consumption of new cars', which is available free of charge at all sales dealerships, from DAT Deutsche Automobil Treuhand GmbH and at www.dat.de.

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